Description

The Union Aerospace Corporation has been experimenting with teleportation technology on Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos. After early successes, something goes wrong. It seems the scientists have opened a gateway straight to Hell. Phobos base is overrun with demonic creatures, and the whole of Deimos simply vanishes. A squad of marines is sent to Phobos, but all except one are quickly slaughtered. It falls to the surviving marine to grab some guns and strike back at the demons.

id Software's follow-up to their genre-defining Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM is another first-person 3D shooter: full-on action seen from the space marine's perspective. Like Wolfenstein, the game consists of distinct episodes, playable in any order. The first episode, Knee-Deep in the Dead, takes place in the Phobos base and is freely available as shareware. The full game continues on Deimos in The Shores of Hell and culminates in Inferno, the final episode which takes place in Hell itself (the Sega 32x version lacks this episode).

The basic objective in each level is simply to reach the exit. Since dozens of enemies stand in the way, the only way to get there is through killing them. Switches and buttons must be pressed to advance at certain points and often color-coded locked doors will block the way - matching keycards or skull keys must be found to pass.

The game's engine technology is more advanced than Wolfenstein's, and thus the levels are more varied and complex. The engine simulates different heights (stairs and lifts appear frequently) and different lighting conditions (some rooms are pitch black, others only barely illuminated). There are outdoor areas, pools of radioactive waste that hurt the player, ceilings that come down and crush him, and unlike Wolfenstein's orthogonally aligned corridors, the walls in DOOM can be in any angle to each other. An automap helps in navigating the levels.

Stylistically, the levels begin with a futuristic theme in the military base on Phobos and gradually change to a hellish environment, complete with satanic symbols (pentagrams, upside-down-crosses and portraits of horned demons), hung-up mutilated corpses and the distorted faces of the damned.

DOOM features a large weapon arsenal, with most weapons having both advantages and drawbacks. The starting weapons are the fists and a simple pistol. Also available are a shotgun (high damage, slow reload, not good at distances), a chaingun (high firing rate, but slightly inaccurate in longer bursts) and a plasma rifle (combining a high firing rate and large damage). The rocket launcher also deals out lots of damage, but the explosion causes blast damage and must be used with care in confined areas or it might prove deadly to the player as well as the enemies. Two further weapons in the game are the chainsaw for close-quarter carnage, and the BFG9000 energy gun, that, while taking some practice to fire correctly, can destroy most enemies in a single burst. The different weapons use four different ammunition types (bullets, shells, rockets and energy cells), so collecting the right type for a certain gun is important.

The game drops some of Wolfenstein's arcade-inspired aspects, so there are no extra lives or treasures to be collected for points, but many other power-ups are still available. Medpacks heal damage while armor protects from receiving it in the first place. Backpacks allow more ammunition to be carried, a computer map reveals the whole layout of the level on the automap (including any secret areas), light amplification visors illuminate dark areas and radiation suits allow travel over waste without taking damage. Also available are berserk packs (which radically increase the damage inflicted by the fists) as well as short-time invisibility and invulnerability power-ups.

The enemies to be destroyed include former humans corrupted during the invasion, plus demons in all shapes and sizes: fireball-throwing imps, floating skulls, pink-skinned demons with powerful bite attacks and large one-eyed flying monstrosities called Cacodemons. Each episode ends with a boss battle against one or two especially powerful creatures.

DOOM popularized multiplayer in the genre with two different modes: Cooperative allows players to move through the single-player game together, while Deathmatch is a competitive game type where players blast at each other to collect 'frag' points for a kill and re-spawn in a random location after being killed.

The 3DO and Sega32x ports lack any multiplayer modes, though the other ports retain the DOS versions multiplayer to varying degree. The various console ports all feature simplified levels and omit some levels, enemies and features from the original DOS release. The SNES and Gameboy Advanced versions of the game actually use different engines and hence feature numerous small gameplay differences.

Trivia

1001 Video Games

3DO version

The development of the 3DO port was rushed; it was developed in ten weeks, from August to October of 1995. The 3DO release contains exclusive, CD-quality remixes of the PC's background music. According to the programmer, Rebecca Ann Heineman, hiring a band to record the music was necessary because she had no time to port the original game's music driver.

The game was originally going to be distributed by Electronic Arts, but the deal fell through.

The source code of this port was released on GitHub by Rebecca Ann Heineman on November 30, 2014.

Administrator tool

DOOM was proposed for use as a tool for systems administrators in Dennis Chow's paper Doom as an Interface for Process Management; in it, through a modified version of DOOM (PSDoom or the Doom Process Manager), processes are depicted as enemies whose share of systems resources can be diminished by attacking them and which are completely terminated when their avatars are killed. (On a loaded system in which all programs' performances are strained, processes may begin attacking each other, aggressively competing - as in Core War - for system resources).

Bugs

When the player picks up a medikit while having 25 HP or less, the game is supposed to display the message "Picked up a medikit you REALLY need!" Due to a bug this message will never display in vanilla DOOM. The code in question does its check on how much health is left only after the medikit is picked up. Since medikits give the player 25 health, they will always have at least 26 health when the check is performed. This bug is corrected in most DOOM source ports.

The 1.0 release had a bug that slowed down networks so much that a freeware utility called killdoom was released shortly after.

Cheats

The SPISPOPD cheat code (no clipping) stands for "Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris". It has nothing to do with the band - rather, it's a reference to a little-known shareware game of the time.

Demo scene

It was the first game to make a head-first mention in a demo (a 64k intro: Cyboman by Gazebo) a couple of days after DOOM was spread. The uptight demo-scene back then actually accepted the game, especially for its amazing graphics and execution. Until that time, most demosceners considered games to be far behind demos in terms of technology.

In a little known FTP strategy guide bundled with some BBS versions of DOOM, John Carmack is quoted as saying "DOOM is in development for the Sega Mars". The Sega Mars was in fact the codename for the Sega 32X.

Alpha and beta versions are available through ftp.cdrom.com in the pub/doom/history directory. Most are crude technology demos, but there are some treasures.

The sky background of Episode 1 was taken from a photograph of Yangshuo Cavern made by Tom Atwood.

Doomguy

Although on the box cover of the game the Doomguy carries a weapon in his right hand, in the game, he is left handed - from the first person view, he carries his weapon in his left hand and also punches with his left fist. The hands of the Doomguy, which millions of players believed to belong to themselves, actually are Kevin Cloud's - one of the art developers. In the very early stages of DOOM the DoomGuy's right ear could take damage and turn into flimsy peace of flesh. This was removed in the later versions of DOOM.

Enemies

The design of the monster Cacodemon is very similar to the beholder, a classic AD&D monster (with eye stalks instead of horns). Although the death animations of some monsters (Cacodemon, Baron of Hell) show that their blood is blue or green, when shooting or damaging these monsters while they are still alive, their blood is always red, and never any other colour.

Fake Atari 2600 Port

Many people thought there was an Atari 2600 port of DOOM in development when images of the port started spreading around the Internet, including pictures of the cartridge, a magazine ad and screenshots from the game. These turned out to be the results of a college project rendered on an Atari 800 computer by James Catalano, who for a joke posted them on a Usenet newsgroup.

German version

The German version of the Game Boy Advance port does feature green blood and removed splatter effects. Additonally corpses disappear almost instantly and all corpses which were used as part of the level decortion were removed.

Graphics

DOOM had a low-res mode (toggled via F5) that doubled the width of the pixels being plotted by messing with the write mask in unchained VGA mode. That, coupled with the triple-buffering used, made the game majorly fast and quite playable on a 386/40. It was not present in DOOM II however (only in alpha versions): Carmack was experimenting with a Hi-Color mode that allowed more than 256 colors on the screen, but that mode halved resolution. He wanted to see what it would look like because it got rid of the color-banding due to the diminished lighting, but 160-pixels horizontally looked very bad so they removed it. Up to version 1.1, it was possible to run the game on three monitors at once, giving a 270-degree field of vision.

Multiplayer

DOOM was the first game to include a deathmatch mode, in which up to four players can compete over a network or in split screen. Maps used for deathmatch were the single-player levels, made less linear.
In December 1993, Intel issued a company-wide memo banning DOOM from their networks. Many big companies issued similar orders, not just because of lost productivity but because it rendered most networks inoperative. Up until version 1.2, the game sent data through high-level broadcast packets that forced every computer on a net (no matter whether they were running the game or not) to transfer the data.

Music

Much of the music in DOOM (and DOOM II) is likely to be inspired by songs of famous heavy metal bands. For example, the music from E1M1 is similar to Metallica's No Remorse (some also say that it is very similar to Master of Puppets), that in E1M4 resembles Rise by Pantera, and the music from E2M1 is similar to AC/DC's Big Gun.

Novels

Dafydd Ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver wrote a set of four novels about the DOOM universe. They were published between June 1995 and January 1996 by Pocket Books. You can view the covers on this fanpage.

Knee Deep in the Dead

Hell on Earth

Infernal Sky

Endgame

In May 1996, Tom Grindberg of Marvel Comics made a comic book about DOOM for a gaming convention.

References

John Carmack took the title from the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money, from the lines when Tom Cruise enters a pool hall with his favorite cue in a black case:
- "What you got in there?"
"In here? Doom."

DOOM's cover art, title screen, and chainsaw weapon seem to be inspired by the Evil Dead series of movies, specifically Army of Darkness. In the movie's storyline, the main character loses his hand to evil powers and fights with a chainsaw on his arm, along with a shotgun. It would be the later 3D game Duke Nukem 3D, itself influenced by DOOM, that would quote some of Evil Dead's most memorable one-liners.

The layout of E1M8 (Phobos Anomaly) bears resemblance to Liberty Island in New York, although it is not clear whether this is intentional.

The name of the last level of episode 2, "Tower of Babel", is an ironic Biblical reference. It is described in Genesis 11:1-9 as a physical pathway to the Heavens. In DOOM, however, the level is the pathway to Hell, as explained in the episode's ending text. On a side note, during that episode, the tower can be seen being built on the intermission screens.

The name of the fourth skill level, "Ultra-Violence", very likely comes from Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange or its film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick. In the novel and film, the protagonist uses the term to describe the activities of himself and his gang - randomly beating up, raping and killing people.

The first retail version-only update of the DOOM engine had the revision number 1.666. This is also a Biblical reference, where 666 is the number of The Beast.

References in pop culture

Rammstein used a sample of the DOOM shotgun and some screaming in their song Wollt ihr das Bett in Flammen sehen? on their album Herzeleid.

The credits inside the booklet of The Smashing Pumpkins' album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995) contain "Explosion from DOOM courtesy of id Software, Inc and bobby prince Music". It's used in the first track, Where Boys Fear to Tread.

The game makes an appearance in season 5, episode 4 of Family Guy, an animated series. Stevie Griffin is riding his bike through various locations, and one of them is a DOOM level with some imps.

In season 2, episode 8, Ross must choose between Rachel and Julie and starts making a list of pros and cons of each. Joey and Chandler are helping him, and Chandler is making the list on his brand new laptop with "Twelve megabytes of RAM, 500 megabyte hard drive. Built-in spreadsheet capabilities and a modem that transmits at over 28,000 BPS". While they're making the list, Ross says that Julie is a paleontologist just like him, while Rachel is just a waitress. To that, Chandler replies: "Waitress. Got it. You guys wanna play Doom? [looks to Ross and Joey, who stare back] Or we could keep doing this. What else?"

DOOM was parodied in an episode of "Die Redaktion" (The Editorial Team), a monthly comedy video produced by the German gaming magazine GameStar. It was published on the DVD of issue 12/2011.

Rocket jumping

DOOM was the first game to include rocket jumping. Only, it worked a bit different from later first person shooters - instead of aiming at the ground (which you couldn't do in the game), you stand near a monster and shoot him with a rocket launcher. The result would be that you fly a bit higher, just like with a rocket jump.

Scrapped Features

The game was originally going to feature a story-based seamless world, similar to Half-Life. However, everyone hated Tom Hall's story idea (soldiers playing cards? Come on!) and Carmack decided the engine couldn't handle a seamless world.

John Carmack once said that he fully intended to add decal support in DOOM (e.g. semi-permanent marks on the walls from bullets, explosions, blood. etc.). It was not implemented, however, since it would raise the game's system requirements.

SEGA 32x version

This version contains only seventeen maps, taken from the "Knee Deep in the Dead" and "The Shores of Hell" episodes. No maps from the third episode, "Inferno", have been included. Maps present: E1M1-E1M8 and E2M1-E2M7, as well as the two secret levels E1M9 and E2M9. After the end credits, the game concludes by reverting to a fake DOS prompt if the player activated the cheat codes. This screen cannot be exited without shutting off the system. If the game was beaten without cheating, the prompt will not be shown; rather the player will see a montage of enemies encountered in the game, just as in DOOM II.

SNES version

The U.S. SNES version of DOOM was one of the few releases for the console to have a colored cartridge (Killer Instinct being another one), namely a red one. Besides this, due to limitations of the SNES hardware, the enemies in the game do not have sides or backs, and are always facing the player. All blood and splatter effects were removed.

Source code

On 23 December, 1997, id Software released the source code. You can download
it from id's FTP. A source port, the Doomsday Engine, was created by some fans. One of the supported games is JDoom.

Text adventure

In 1996, the first level of the first episode was implemented by Piers Johnson in TADS, resulting in FooM - a text adventure game interface for DOOM. Down-loadable with source at http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/foom.tar.gz

Version 1.4

With patch 1.4, including all later re-releases and ports, a detail in the "Command Center" level was changed: A few computers were arranged as swastikas before.

Weapons

The images for the pistol in DOOM were most likely created from the Beretta 92FS pistol, which is currently the standard service pistol of the U.S. military.

The pistol, shotgun, and chaingun where photos of toy guns, while the chainsaw was the photo of a real chainsaw. It belonged to the girlfriend of one of the art developers, Tom Hall.

The BFG9000 can only be found in secret areas in the game, so it's basically a secret weapon.

Windows 95 Promo

The level E1M2: Nuclear Plant was used for Bill Gates' promo for Windows 95.

October 2004 (Issue #138) - one of the "Top 25 Most Influential Games of All Time"

GameSpy

2001 – #1 Top Game of All Time

2001 – Game Boy Advance Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)

2001 – Game Boy Advance Action/Adventure Game of the Year

GameStar (Germany)

Issue 12/1999 - #3 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking

Issue 12/2007 - one of the "Ten Most Influential PC-Games" (It is the milestone which stands for the change from 2D to 3D graphics. Since DOOM, the licensing of 3D engines is an important business branch in the PC industry.)

PC Gamer

April 2000 - #12 in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll

April 2005 - #2 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list

Retro Gamer

October 2004 (Issue #9) – #9 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)

Other

2001 - The Greatest Game of All Time voted by industry insiders (according to GameSpy)